Annoyances

Thursday, February 24, 2005 ~ Comments Off

The online status of blogrolling.com is currently changing faster than superman in a phone booth. One minute it’s up, next minute it’s down. I wouldn’t mind but I can’t get the built in “blogrolling-esque” WordPress stuff to work properly (it won’t show when I site has been updated), and considering Bloglines was down for a while yesterday I can’t even tag into that system.

So, for the next few hours, there ain’t no blogroll. Sorry.

Decided something is better than nothing – Other Blogs section now back (on the left) but doesn’t show when a site has updated.

Whilst I’m bitching, does anyone know how to STOP WordPress adding paragraph tags where it doesn’t need to? Keeps catching me out but chucking them in where they aren’t required. Will search the forums later. I’m hoping to learn a lot more about WordPress in the coming months, especially as I’ve bitten the bullet and signed up to work on their Wiki. Guess I should finish the first batch of topics on the HaloScan Wiki first though.

AND ANOTHER THING!! The search only seems to return the first 10 posts. WHY OH WHY OH WHY!

Miscellany

Tuesday, February 15, 2005 ~ Comments Off

Despite waffling on about it, I don’t have a new stereo. In fact as of last week I don’t have an old stereo either. I won’t be replacing it as I have a surround sound DVD system which happily plays CDs, MP3 CDs and accepts an input from the iPod (although at some point it’ll be an input from wireless connection to my PC upstairs) and I have radio stations galore through the Sky box, which in turn is routed through the nice meaty surround amplifier. Does the job for me.

ALL posts on the site now have friendly time and date information. You may have noticed and been non-plussed. You may be right. I may be crazy.

The archive page has been updated, still not sure I like the layout but it’s getting there. There is an issue with the older, non-titled posts and a WordPress plugin I’m using but I do intend to go through the older posts at some point so that issue should disappear.

Which reminds me. Is there an easier way to go through and edit old posts in WordPress? The WordPress Edit screen keeps leaping back to the current posts. Can’t I choose a month or a category and have it ‘stick’? I can’t be the only person that has come up against this, but Google isn’t being much help. Maybe I should Ask MSN?

Fun discussions about America financing both sides of the war on terrorism. Unfortunately I still baulk at the imagery I associate with “America sponsoring terrorism” – do they wander around with a form? And does everyone just copy the amount the first person fills in? After all you can’t be seen to be giving less, it’s just not the done thing.

WordPress stuff

Thursday, January 6, 2005 ~ Comments Off

Permalink structure
What gives? Is it because I have my index.php file outside my WordPress directory? I can get it to build the structure but then the permalinked post loses the link to the CSS (it presumes it’s in a different folder I think).
Sorted.

Comments, Trackbacks, Pingbacks
I’m still using HaloScan for the comments, so any pingbacks don’t get displayed. Is there a way to have Pingbacks and Trackbacks displayed in a new window (like the comments are)?
I’m still swithering over switching my comments to WordPress. I get almost no comment spam at all using HaloScan, can I achieve the same with WordPress? And can I have it display the same way it currently does? I know I can display recent comments easily but is that reason enough for change?

Archive tags
What format of archives would you find useful? Date, Category, anything else?
Sorted, and I’ve updated both the Archives and the Search facility with this nice little plugin: condensed content for archives.

Plugins
I’ve found some here, here, here and here. I’ll be checking out the del.icio.us ones later but what others should I be looking at?

Information
My biggest gripe with WordPress is the way information is handled. It’s all a bit random and unpredictable. I know it’s open source but they really need to agree on a method of delivering new information, and storing current info. Sometimes you get info from the Docs, sometimes from the Wiki, sometimes from the forum, more often from a Google search and someone’s blog. This is NOT good. Example: The recent 1.2.2 release. It stated that it “fixed some things” and despite asking, and getting some extra info, I’ve still to be able to find a comprehensive list of what was fixed (or what was broken), and what is new in that release. Very frustrating. Unless, of course, this is all explained somewhere and I’ve just missed it.

Dusty Tomes

Sunday, January 2, 2005 ~ Comments Off

If you look over to your left, you should see a link to the new archive page. At the moment it only lists posts by date but I’ll be updating it in the near future to make it a bit more useful. I’m also going to be converting my old “musings/wordage” bits and bobs into posts and assigning them to a category. Hopefully I’LL then be able to find things on my own site.

I’m also switching the Photo Gallery over to Flickr, I’ve upgraded to a Pro account and it should meet my needs. I still have space on my Blueyonder account so I can use that for anything else I need. I think this will be the most organised this site will ever have been. Hey, it’s only taken me 5 years.

Aside from that there shouldn’t be too many more changes to the site for a while. At least until Spring.

Categorical

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 ~ Comments Off

So I’ve upgraded to WordPress 1.2.2. Pretty smooth. I bet you never even noticed. Right?

Anyway, part of my redesign thoughts include making better use of some of the WordPress features. I’m still not overly bothered about using their comment feature, especially as HaloScan will be getting some new features in the New Year. However the category feature intrigues me, mainly because it’s a completely new thing to remember when posting. No categories in Blogger so it was pretty much a case of typing up my usual nonsense and pressing Post.

Ideally what I need is to be prompted to choose a category or two, every time I post. Alas the WordPress Plugins Database doesn’t have anything like that. I wonder how hard it would be to code one? Hmm a little holiday project maybe.

Mind you I’ll be working on a Wiki for HaloScan, as well as a little site redesign so I’d better not promise too much. After all I’ve got three bottles of Southern Comfort to get through. And all that food… crap movies on TV. Oh yes I’ll be busy busy busy.

UPDATE: Ohh and need to get trackbacks working properly – I’m getting emails saying that people have pinged a post but no way to see WHO has!

WordPress users

Wednesday, December 8, 2004 ~ Comments Off

Just a wee note to say if you are using any version ABOVE (NOT including) 1.2, then I’d have a look at this and this. The latter is probably a better explanation. Ohh and not trying to be cryptic just don’t want to alert the unwanted to this (you’ll understand what I’m wittering on about if you read those links). There is more ‘discussion’ in the WP forums if you dig for it, although it’s getting a bit messy already.

Hat tip: wee David for bringing it to my, and now your, attention.

Thank Allah for backups

Tuesday, December 7, 2004 ~ Comments Off

If you popped in between midnight and 12.30am the site was down.

That’s what I get for trying to install a nightly build of WordPress. But then as the bug I logged is, seemingly, fixed in 1.3 and I’m running.. er.. 1.2.1… well aside from making me a complete ass, it also makes me wonder what the hell some people are thinking.

WordPress is compromised of oodles of little PHP files. You edit some of them, others you don’t touch (indeed you can delete some of them). Yet when you download a nightly build you get NADA in the way of indication of what has changed i.e. what files you should upload and what files you should re-edit.

But then it is a development build and I’m obviously still too new to the WordPress world (but hey, everyone’s been telling me how easy it is!).

I’ll be leaving the upgrade until I can find more info, but for the mean time I would like to dedicate this post to my snazzy little 512MB pen drive. The backup I have on my home PC was a couple of days (and template edits) out of date but I DID download and backup to the pen drive before I left work. Which, it turns out, was just as well.

Still the service that passes for normal has been resumed. Hell, you probably didn’t even notice a thing, right?

The next task is to switch the main blog to use WordPress comments including importing and converting all my old HaloScan comments as well. Now if that doesn’t kill my site who knows what will.